Preamble: Welcome to our live coverage of the Republican presidential debate taking place tonight, with Texas governor Rick Perry making his first appearance as the cat set among a flock of political pigeons.
Younger readers may not realise this but before his beatification Ronald Reagan was actually president of the United States, a fact commemorated by the beautiful presidential library built in his name in California, where tonight's debate takes place.
Tonight's debate is notable for the debut of Perry on the national stage, and for being the first of three Republican debates that take place in the next two weeks – the next one being on 12 September and then another on 22 September. Presumably the Republican party has taken a leaf from the Discovery Channel's schedule: it has Shark Week, the GOP has Debate Month.
Like Shark Week, Debate Month will be a televised catalogue of horror, with blood in the water and the pack (of journalists) turning on and devouring the weakest members.
So what do we have tonight? Aside from Perry there will be leading contender Mitt Romney, Tea Party favourite Michele Bachmann, the evergreen Ron Paul, and a supporting cast of bottom-feeders: Jon Huntsman, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, none of whom have a realistic chance of winning the nomination even if all the other candidates collectively resigned.
For Perry the game plan is obvious: it's his first outing so he needs to play it safe and avoid doing anything to frighten anyone, but also be prepared to bat away attacks from the likes of Santorum, who is desperate enough to get nasty.
Romney needs to do a lot more work to regain the momentum his campaign has lost in recent weeks. Bachmann has also waned somewhat since Perry's decision to run but in reality she remains a fringe candidate, hoping to use Iowa as a springboard.
But with so many candidates on stage before NBC News's cameras, the chances of an actual debate are slim: what is most likely is a battle of sound-bites as individual candidates struggle to make themselves heard among the babble.
The debate kicks off at 8pm ET (that's 5pm in California or 1am in the UK, for insomniac political junkies), and we'll be live-blogging it all here, as well as on Twitter. And of course feel free to leave your comments below.
In the meantime, here's my colleague Ewen Macaskill's preview of tonight's showdown:
The main focus of Wednesday night's debate at the Ronald Reagan Library in the Simi Valley, near Los Angeles, will be on whether Texas governor Rick Perry, who only entered the race last month, can consolidate his frontrunner status.
Tom Mann, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution, said: "It is interesting because of Rick Perry, and the fact that he has sky-rocketed to the lead in the Republican field without many people having a firm hold on him, just some impressions."
Want more? Why not "enjoy" our liveblog of the last Republican debate in Iowa – or achieve the same effect by stubbing your own toe, repeatedly.
Speaking of stubbing your own toe repeatedly, yesterday I had root canal surgery. Tonight it's the GOP debate. Which will be the more painful?
At least with a root canal you get Novocaine. I guess there's always booze.
Who is missing tonight? Why Sarah Palin, the Gruffalo* of American politics.
If you think Sarah Palin is still in the running – and she's not, in any real sense, or even any unreal sense – then read this blast by Erick Erickson in RedState today:
To paraphrase Ann [Coulter], a lot of us fell in love with Sarah Palin because of her enemies and a lot of us have fallen out of love with Sarah Palin because of her fans.
For the past year, Palin fans have become an online fixture with more venom and insanity than the most rabid Ron Paul fan. They have not evangelized on behalf of Sarah Palin trying to lead people to Sarah Palin, they have freaked a lot of us out.
I am at the point of fearing that should Palin not get in the race we're going to have a Hale Bopp moment with many of her most ardent supporters. These people have become too emotionally invested in one person to discuss that person rationally or even to address serious policy concerns.
Erickson's post is entitled "Enough". Which tells you everything.
* There's no such thing as a Gruffalo, don't you know?
I just asked my colleague Ewen Macaskill to sum up tonight's debate in a word, and he said: "Tea."
This debate is in the Ronald Reagan Library, hallowed ground for Republicans. But as the LA Times notes, Ronald Reagan was actually a liberal RINO sell-out:
As president, the conservative icon approved several tax increases to deal with a soaring budget deficit, repeatedly boosted the nation's debt limit, signed into law a bill granting amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants and, despite his anti-Washington rhetoric, oversaw an increase in the size and spending of the federal government. Before that, as California governor, he enacted what at the time was the largest state tax increase in American history. He also signed into law one of the nation's most permissive abortion bills; any Republican who tried that today would be cast out of the party.
Different era. Personally I am bored and/or tired of the "Ronald Reagan wouldn't be nominated by today's Republican party" blah blah blah. That's like saying Babe Ruth wouldn't make it in major league baseball these days because he was fat. Who cares?
Other Republicans who wouldn't get nominated in today's Republican party: Abraham Lincoln, Dwight Eisenhower.
A recent poll shows Rick Perry is in the lead but with some nuance:
A new ABC News-Washington Post poll out today shows that among conservative Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, Perry leads 39 percent to 21 percent over Mitt Romney. But one bright spot for Romney: Among moderates, Romney leads Perry, 35 percent to 12 percent.
"There being more conservatives than moderates in the party, it's advantage Perry," notes ABC News pollster Gary Langer. "Yet, in a challenge to party cohesiveness, fewer than eight in 10 Romney supporters, 78 percent, say they'd support Perry in a general election race against Obama. More Perry supporters, 91 percent, say they'd back Romney were he the nominee."
Maybe Rick Perry will come under heavy fire tonight. Here's an "open letter" from Ron Paul, pulling no punches:
Governor Perry, let me be clear: It is not that you supported Al Gore that worries us.
It is that you supported Hillary Clinton's health care plan.
You pushed for federal bailout and stimulus funds.
You support welfare for illegal immigrants.
You tried to forcibly vaccinate 12-year-old girls against sexually transmitted diseases by executive order.
You raised taxes twice.
And, state debt has more than doubled in your tenure as governor, pushing Texas to the brink of our constitutional debt limit.
It's that you supported ALL of these bad ideas that are inconsistent with how most Republicans understand conservatism, yet you now try to swagger your way into the Tea Party.
Sounds worse than Obama, mmm? At least Obama didn't support Hillary Clinton's healthcare plan.
And here's Ron Paul's bare-knuckle ad attacking Perry. Very tough – and one of the better ads out this cycle.
It's all about to start.
If you want to watch it via the magic of the internet, MSNBC are live streaming the debate.
And it's the economy, with NBC News's Brian Williams in the chair asking the questions. First question to Rick Perry: Texas's education and poverty figures are rubbish, so tell us?
Perry is straight into how many private sector jobs have been created in Texas. "Who on this stage can get America working?" he says.
Romney is to Perry's right, and staring at him a little creepily, with a rictus grin.
Perry sounds confident, taking issue with some of the figures.
Mitt Romney and Rick Perry. Photograph: Danny Moloshok/Reuters
Next question is to Romney, asking him about his record as a "buy-out specialist". Romney ignores this and says: "If I had spent my whole life in politics I wouldn't be running for president right now."
Oh come on Mitt, you've been doing nothing but running for president for the last five years.
Now Romney is defending his record as a venture capitalist at Bain Capital. "They didn't all work," he concedes, but claims to have created "tens of thousands of new jobs". Um.
Now Romney is claiming that he isn't a career politician, again. Ha.
Kapow: now Perry, offered rebuttal, is going full on at Romney's record:
Well, Governor Romney left the private sector, and he did a great job of creating jobs in the private sector all around the world. But the fact is, when he moved that experience to government, he had one of the lowest job creation rates in the country. So the fact is, while he had a good private sector record, his public sector record did not match that. As a matter of fact, we created more jobs in the last three months in Texas than he created in four years in Massachusetts.
Responding, Romney gets a laugh out of a line that Perry claiming to have created jobs is "like Al Gore claiming to have invented the internet".
Perry is right back at him, saying that Michael Dukakis, the former Democratic Massachusetts governor and abysmal presidential candidate, created three times more jobs as governor than Romney did. Snap!
So far, the first 10 minutes of this debate have been far better than all the other debates put together.
Romney comes back at Perry, claiming that George Bush created more jobs as governor of Texas than Perry did – and Perry says that's not true.
A team of fact-checkers at the New York Times are preparing overtime requests at this very moment.
Now Perry comes out ahead in that exchange, because putting Romney next to Dukakis is a far more damning comparison than Bush to Perry – George Bush being a Republican who is still admired by Republicans, after all. Dukakis, not so much.
Some other candidates are talking now but, whatever.
Oh it's Michele Bachmann, and she's complaining that 47% of African American kids can't find jobs. Because ... well we know Bachmann is a bleeding heart on the plight of African Americans.
Ron Paul O'Clock! He's on fire here, although he could also be running for the presidential nomination of the Monster Raving Liberals Party, based on his line about not bailing out banks and "dumping on the poor".
Oh it's Newt Gingrich. He's still running?
Did you know he used to hang out with Ronald Reagan? That was back in the 19th century.
Glitch! The moderators try to play a clip of non-politician Mitt Romney in the 2007 presidential debate, about healthcare – when he was in favour of socialist medicine (in an American context).
The moderators ask the candidates what we all learned from the Massachusetts healthcare experience. "It was a great opportunity to see what wouldn't work," says Perry, taking an opportunity to score an open goal.
Romney blahs on about something something, it's different, and anyway Obamacare is terrible and he'll stop it on Day One.
Perry then takes another opportunity to poke Romney in the eye with a stethoscope.
This debate is literally awesome so far.
Top Guardian journalist Ewen Macaskill gives his thoughts on the debate:
Perry surprisingly opted for the risky strategy of attacking Romney from the start, on both jobs and health care. It is enjoyable for journalists but not sure how it plays with Republican voters. When Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama exchanged personal jibes during a primary debate in South Carolina, polls suggested voters did not like it.
I don't know why Perry felt the need to be combative since he has a strong lead in the polls. The safer option would have been to consolidate that lead. It is the first of five debates over the next six weeks. He could have waited. It might work for Perry. He is coming across as feisty and Romney is coming across as defensive.
Idiot loser Newt Gingrich is now complaining that the questions are trying to make Republicans attack each other. Which is stupid because, in case he hadn't noticed, this is an election in which Republicans are running against each other.
Newt got big applause from this line in the last debate and he's obviously trying to make more hay. Yawn.
"There is no one in the 12 years I was in the United States Senate that did more to work on poverty issues, and working on the poor, than Rick Santorum," says Rick Santorum.
So, Rick Santorum, you worked with yourself?
In a follow-up answer, Rick Perry refers to Rick Santorum as "the last individual". I suspect he possibly was confused by Santorum's reference to himself in the third person and so thought Santorum was someone else. And to be fair, that could happen.
Down below in the comments, Corrections writes: "Why isn't Newt bragging about all the jobs he created at Tiffany's?"
That's so cruel, to remind people of this story.
Rick Perry even gets in a sharp job at Ron Paul, reminding him of a letter he wrote to Reagan saying he'd quit the party, after Paul brought up a letter Perry wrote supporting Hillarycare.
Perry had a broad grin, and Paul gobbles like a fish out of water and actually says things weren't all that great under Ronald Reagan. For shame, Ron Paul, and in front of Nancy Reagan (she's in the audience).
Ad break, followed by a tribute to Ronald Reagan and the enduring bond between Ron and Nancy (with the Verve's Bittersweet Symphony as the backing music, bizarrely). Strangely, Ron's first marriage isn't mentioned. Lack of time, probably.
Here's Ewen Macaskill's half-time take:
Half-time in the Republican debate. All the pundits' predictions before the debate are turning out to be untrue: that Rick Perry is a poor debater, that he is thin-skinned, that he would come across as arrogant and smug, and that his Texan accent will remind people of George W Bush. Even when he attacks rivals such as Ron Paul, he delivered it with a huge, disarming smile. The first half easily belongs to him.
For housekeeping reasons I missed an excellent bit of debate on Rick Perry's bonkers book Fed Up, which has been attacked by the old Bush crew – Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, all of whom don't like Perry – over his comments on social security, calling it a Ponzi scheme.
Perry isn't backing down and sticks by the Ponzi scheme line – which forces Romney to take a more conventional line saying that social security is needed for America's vulnerable. Now, which of these two approaches will go down best with Republican primary voters? Hmm, let's see....
Now Ron Paul lines up to take a swing at Perry over his executive order in Texas supporting the vaccination of 12-year-old girls against sexually transmitted diseases.
I can't help thinking that with Paul and Perry there's some deep, ancient Texas political issues going on.
Responding, Perry says it was all about preventing cancer and that the order had an opt-out for parents. "At the end of the day I will always err on the side of saving lives," says Perry. Nice try but it's a tough one to explain.
"I am offended!" says Rick Santorum of the vaccination programme. As if anyone cares. Which they don't.
Offered a chance to have a go at Perry, Romney gets all presidential and more than a little patronising: "I believe his heart was in the right place."
My colleagues uncharitably compare Michele Bachmann to Mary Tyler Moore. Not her politics though, obviously.
I'm assuming Bachmann is still there because she's been so very quiet tonight.
Bonus point for Jon Huntsman: first mention of 9/11. Sort of.
An email arrives from the Perry campaign, smacking down Romney's claim at the start of the debate that George Bush created more jobs than Perry as governor of Texas. For shame Mitt Romney.
Still trying to get my head around Ron Paul last homeland security/Fema rant, and his outrage at the air conditioning bill being paid in the Green Zone in Baghdad. His thought is that cutting off the air conditioning would bring the troops home. Or something.
Oh god now Newt Gingrich is talking about something he voted on immigration in 1986. Newt, that was 25 years ago. Twenty-five. Years. Ago. Everyone else who voted for that legislation is dead.
Now he wants American Express and Mastercard to run immigration, to avoid government fraud. Because no one ever defrauded credit card companies.
Immigration: the solution, according to everyone except Ron Paul and Rick Perry, is to build a big fence all the way along the border with Mexico.
"To not build a fence is in effect to yield United States sovereignty," says Michele Bachmann.
The moderator is pushing Bachmann to say what she'd do with the 11 million illegal immigrants here, and she won't answer, but just keeps talking about how awesome it was back in the 1950s when no one ever entered the country, apparently. And people with brown skin certainly had a hard time getting citizenship.
What a nice touch by NBC News to invite a Hispanic gentleman to ask the questions about immigration specifically. And not patronising at all.
Jon Huntsman has a solution to immigration, which is to somehow reanimate Ronald Reagan and ask him.
To be fair, that would probably be easier and cheaper than building a goddamn fence.
Awesome piece of Ron Paul: "I believe this fence business may be used to keep us in." That's it, it's the Berlin Wall. Good point Ron Paul.
Ewen Macaskill gives his take, and thinks Bachmann is having a bad night so far:
The debate confirms that it is two-horse race. The other six are basically spectactors in the Perry-Romney clashes. The biggest loser of the night is Michele Bachmann. She emerged as the winner in the New Hampshire debate, someone fresh. But she has been overshadowed since Perry joined the race last month, eating into her support among the Tea Party and other right-wingers. She sounds tired tonight, rehashing old lines about Obamacare that don't seem relevant to the debate.
Perry is asked if he'd have voted against the debt deal last month, and he says he would have, as all the rest would have.
Jon Huntsman, asked about his 9/11 comment earlier, gives a strange Jimmy Carter-ish speech about there being a lack of confidence in America.
Romney chimes in, agreeing there is a crisis of confidence. Because of the lighting on stage, there are often dark shadows falling across his eyes, making him look mildly cadaverish.
Perry actually says something nice about Obama: that he got Osama bin Laden. A deep silence falls upon the hall.
Asked about her opposition to intervention in Libya, Bachmann completely ducks the question and bangs on about a nuclear-armed Iran.
Pushed to answer, Bachmann maintains that the Libya intervention was wrong. "Take a look at where we are in Libya today," says Bachmann, who is worried about something called "the revelation of a global Caliphate". Because Gaddafi was a stable, meritocratic leader.
Now Rick Santorum claims the United Nations "told" Obama to intervene in Libya. Oh dear.
Now Jon Huntsman is asked about his insane left-wing view that science is useful. Unbelievably, he defends himself. No wonder he doesn't have a chance.
Perry is asked pointedly about his climate change scepticism. "The science is not settled about this," says Perry. "Galileo got out-voted for a spell." Well there we go. Although, I'm not sure the 17th century Catholic church really counts as "scientists" out-voting Galileo.
Republican candidates (from left): Santorum, Gingrich, Bachmann, Romney, Perry, Paul, Cain, Huntsman. Photograph: Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images
Now all the candidates are offered the chance to be rude about Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman. "I'd fire him tomorrow," says Gingrich. Actually you can't, Newt, since he's confirmed for a fixed term. So you can't fire him until 31 January, 2014 – not that you'll be within sniffing distance of the White House anyway, Newt.
This queuing up to attack Ben Bernanke is seriously shameful. At this rate, no respectable economist would want to be Fed chairman under most of these candidates.
Rick Perry is asked how he can sleep at night given the number of people executed in Texas – and when the figure, 234, is mentioned, the audience bursts into applause. Wow.
Given the opportunity to defend capital punishment during a Republican debate, Perry hits a home run. You could just take his answer and run it in an ad unedited:
If you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you're involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the State of Texas. And that is you will be executed.
And it's all over! What does Larry Sabato, the Sage of the University of Virginia, think about the debate?
Odd: Perry has both won & lost debate. Rs liked what he said & how he said it. But Social Security comments are BIG swing voter problem.
I agree. Bashing social security is a commonplace among the Tea Party and many Republicans in Congress, and so hardly hurts in a Republican primary. In the general election, not so much.
So what do we think? Here's former Paisley Daily Express reporter Ewen Macaskill's view:
With only months left to the first caucuses and primaries, scheduled at present for the first week in February, the candidates tonight abandoned the polite skirmishing that marked the debates before the summer and opted for all-out confrontation, or at least Perry and Mitt Romney did.
Perry seems to be clear winner and I expect the polls will reflect that, at least among conservatives, who will decide the nomination. They would have liked much of what he said about jobs, health and social security, describing it as a 'Ponzi scheme' but especially his lines on immmigration and the high number of executions in Texas.
It will not have done him any harm either that he stood up in public to the former Bush strategist Karl Rove.
The other candidates seemed off the pace, especially Michele Bachmann, who was trailing in third place.
The Huffington Post's Sam Stein tweets: "Big loser tonight: Bernanke. Big winner: Gallileo"
MSNBC assembles a team of liberal commentators who all agree that Mitt Romney had a great night. So, that means he didn't. If you've won Eugene Robinson, you've lost Republican America.
Quick comment: why was this debate so much better than the snooze-fest previous debates? Well, even though it ran for 105 minutes, the candidates were given much longer answer times – and that gave them time to answer without rushing through soundbites.
Also, the moderators had the lattitude to ask follow-up questions when they didn't get answers the first time around.
Hats off to NBC News, apart from the Latino to ask the immigration questions.
The Washington Post's Dan Balz tweets:
Romney team going hard at Perry over Social Security in spin room. Eric Fehrnstrom says nominating Perry would be a "disaster" for the party.
So there we go: a proper debate. Here's what happened. I'm usually wrong about this but I suspect Rick Perry lured Mitt Romney into a trap here.
First, Perry neutralised Romney's strongest claim to the job of being president: his boasts of being able to create jobs. Given the state of the US economy, this is by a long way the number one issue.
Second, he got Romney to mount a traditional defence of the current social security model, which even Romney himself doesn't support (based on his most recent economic proposals). Here's what Romney said:
Our nominee has to be someone who isn't committed to abolishing Social Security, but who is committed to saving Social Security.
We have always had, at the heart of our party, a recognition that we want to care for those in need, and our seniors have the need of Social Security. I will make sure that we keep the program and we make it financially secure. We save Social Security.
And under no circumstances would I ever say by any measure it's a failure. It is working for millions of Americans, and I'll keep it working for millions of Americans. And we've got to do that as a party.
Now this may play well in Florida with its large band of retirees, but the inadequacies of social security is vibrant trope in the Republican party, inside and outside of Congress. That means Perry's description of it as a "Ponzi scheme" is closer to the Republican base than Romney's, which sounds suspiciously like the status quo.
Romney's big problem was always that he didn't appear to stand for anything, that he was an opportunist and ideologically uncommitted. That image has got worse after this debate – Republicans have little appetite to nominate another McCain style moderate. On that basis, it was not a good night for Romney.
In contrast, Bachmann seemed limited and shallow, saying the same things as she has in the last two debates. It's perhaps no surprise her star is on the wane.
Of the others, Jon Huntsman said some interesting things but for some reason comes across as lightweight, even if the things he says are sensible. He's the only moderate in the race, given the baggage that Romney has thrown overboard, but the time isn't right for him and won't be anytime soon.
Finally found that Ron Paul quote about air conditioning in the Green Zone:
We're spending – believe it or not, this blew my mind when I read this – $20 billion a year for air conditioning in Afghanistan and Iraq in the tents over there and all the air conditioning. Cut that $20 billion out, bring in – take $10 off the debt, and put $10 into FEMA or whoever else needs it, child health care or whatever. But I'll tell you what, if we did that and took the air conditioning out of the Green Zone, our troops would come home, and that would make me happy.
So, take out the air conditioning and the troops will just come home because it's so hot in those tents: "I'm sorry General Petraeus but I'm just sweating too much."
Here's how George Bush senior and St Ronald Reagan debated illegal immigration back in 1980 – not just another era but possibly another planet, in terms of the humanity.
Time to wrap things up for the night. It was a difficult debate to liveblog because there was just so much going on.
What it comes down to is this: did Perry's positions on social security reform and even the science of climate change help him or hurt him (or neither)? That question gets answered in different ways in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. So it depends.
The rough consensus of the interweb seems to be that Romney had the best night but for various reasons (such as all those debates that Hillary Clinton "won" in 2007-08) I'm not so sure. But certainly, this was a far more interesting and insightful debate than its predecessors.
And the great news: the next one is on Monday, 12 September. And we can do this all again. Good night and thanks for reading.